Imagine being able to use an email for more than just communicating through text and pictures. It would be nice to be able to securely send money directly from one email address to another, without having to log in to a bank’s website, which may or may not be working right when you need it. That is actually possible, thanks to the development work going on behind the scenes with Paymail. Ryan X. Charles, the CEO and founder of the Money Button and one of the main contributors to the Paymail system, discusses how it would work in a new video.
Paymail, simply put, is a system that correlates a username with a cryptocurrency wallet address. However, it is much more robust than that. It is completely evolving into “an extension of email.” Email addresses are already used for identification and authentication in a number of aspects of what we do every day, and these capabilities are easily integrated into the Paymail infrastructure.
It would be possible to use Paymail to send and receive emails that are completely encrypted end to end. This is not possible with virtually all current email structures, which are loose and haphazard. Email service providers have the capability now to intercept and read emails, but Paymail email would prevent this from being a possibility.
Given that the system could be administered on-chain, there would now be a way to send money to someone safely and securely right through email. Email applications could be configured to include a currency option and, since the email addresses are used for identification, there would be no need to have to be concerned with wallet hash addresses. Create a new email, add the recipient, include the amount to be sent and that’s it.
There’s another advantage to Paymail that warrants discussion. In addition to having the ability to take email to an entirely new level and facilitate payment remittances, it can also be used to prevent spam. Email addresses could be configured, by the user, to reject any emails sent without a payment, making it much more difficult for spammers and hackers to carry on their activity. A user could establish, for example, a payment of $0.04 (or even $10 per email) in cryptocurrency for each email to be received. Any email that doesn’t include the payment would automatically be rejected. Of course, the ability to include white lists would be incorporated so that friends, family and coworkers can send emails freely, but everyone else would have to pay.
These concepts are more than just pie-in-the-sky ideas. They are already being worked on and this is the next step in the evolution of email. Thanks to blockchain, and especially Bitcoin, life is getting easier.
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